Regular readers of the online version of the New York Times will be asked to pay for a monthly subscription to the newspaper after perusing 20 articles on the site for free.
On 28 March the Gray Lady will begin charging frequent visitors to its website.
The newspaper described the "loyal readers" paywall as a "bet" based on the …

COMMENTS

Drink your own Kool Aid

NYT readership is down because readers are not finding content worth reading, even when free. There is just too much content there which is patently ideological wishful thinking and fantasy, yet presented as fact. One of those themes is the notion that increasing taxes on "the rich" is free money. Am glad to see the NYT attempt to implement their own beliefs on their readership. Just might make capitalists out of them one day, if they survive.

Way off base...

During the height of America's Golden Age, the 1950s and 60s, the top American personal tax rate was over 70% - way over at times (http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php). It is now at 35%, and the country is crumbling, with pathetic educational standards, rampant income inequality, and a rapidly declining standard of living.

All the NYT does is point out certain facts like that...sorry if you can't connect the dots yourself.

Allowed to charge more for iPad?

Doesn't charging $20 for the iPad subscription rather than the same $15 that applies to other mobile/Web access run afoul of those new guidelines? Or did the NYT get special dispensation to do things differently? Or, most likely of all, am I just confused...

Apple cut...

No, they are charging more to allow the 30% payment to APPLE, as per the terms and conditions of their apps. I'm just SHOCKED how many stories El Reg has had on that, and yet here we have people wondering why the iPad app will actually cost more...DOH!

@Petrea

>those new App Store guidelines about allowing the subscription for the same price everywhere?".

Good luck with that. It either requires publishers to take a loss on iOS or subsidise that loss by charging Android etc users more. Most iOS users aren't going to care about an extra $5 a month here and there, those that do aren't the customers that Apple wants anyway.

Hmmm 20 free views you say?

Re: Hmmm 20 free views you say?

Right now most articles require a username/password, even though they are free. You're correct that cookies are used.

So presumably in future you could get around the limit if you created multiple accounts, but not if they successfully link the accounts to something hard to fake such as a real postal address. Most people will probably not want to be bothered by creating multiple accounts though, especially heavy users.

Tina Ferrer

Keller is an old white guy trying to remain viable in a new media world and he’s as delusional as they come. Paying for NYT’s content is like paying twice the normal amount for root canal when you don’t need root canal. Yeah, let's pay to hear whoopee cushions go off simultaneously but Keller’s joke is those aren’t whoopee cushions.

Allowed to charge more for iPad?

Already asked Google News

NYTster, anyone?

This is an unfortunate act of corporate desperation for which NYT shows a considerable lack of conscience toward its hard won but honorary role as a major force in US public opinion. And it shows that, as with many (if not all) corporations, continued quarterly growth of the company (rather than a level of sustainability or shrinkage that reflects the real economic environment) is far more important than the people that it serves, in that service continually shrinks to feed the company’s artificially increasing bottom line. And what incredibly good timing; in the depths of a worldwide recession NYT decides to essentially drop lower income readers in favor of a monied minority that will pay such an exorbitant price.

So, in 15 years NYT marketing team has not come up with a viable internet distribution/advertising model? That is truly unbelievable. How many different advertising schemes has NYT tried since going online? How many unique or pioneering ideas have they had to change the game? If there is blame to be attributed for the insolvency of NYT’s online model, it rests not with the public, but squarely on the shoulders of NYT. It is unfortunate that in the rarified strata of boardrooms filled with disconnected executives and reams of financial “projections,” the concept of “the customer is always right” appears to have been abandoned.

It reminds me of a time when music industry “suddenly” woke up to the fact that the world had changed around them, but had up to that point virtually sat on their hands. Customers (and potential customers) wanted lower prices and more granular online distribution. Imagine if, in response, the industry had turned to a model that made content completely unaffordable for many in the hopes that a high price/low distribution model would save the day. How would that have worked out?

In the case of the music industry, companies that created new ways of doing business, with an eye toward customer satisfaction as an important component to their business model, survived and indeed flourished. The opportunity for NYT may involve some nominal online subscription fees, but more likely exists in the development of a new paradigm for reaching the vast and as yet untapped online advertising potential. That online advertising hasn’t worked for NYT to this point just means just that - not that it won’t or can’t.

It’s not time (not that it ever will be) to drop the for fee online subscription bomb.

continued quarterly growth

Indeed, this is something that irritates me about business in western countries, this insane insistence on growth every single quarter. If there is no growth then they are punished by the shysters in the banking mafia.

There is no awareness of sustainability or evidence of any long term thinking at all.

It is all about making more money than last quarter, whatever it takes.

We'll see if I keep reading...

I have the New York Time's rss feed on my main page. I read a couple articles a day, but really only because they're free. There are other newspapers I can read for free, so if I start getting to the point where I'm going over my limit, I'll just look elsewhere for comparable articles.

I think they should also offer a 48 hour period for a dollar, I think that'd be more successful among casual readers like myself.

NYT cares . . .

Sweet. Customers are so important that they quietly extiguished the 2500 comments they received on their pay-up-you-slackers announcement article. Aside from removing all comments, as well as the ability to add new ones, NYT has made a "correction" which states that the bottom tier price ($15) includes 4 weeks web access AND a web app.

Now that's a much, much (enclose with italics for sarcasm here) better deal, eh?